For Positive Effects On B2B Social Media Marketing, Make Sure Your Business Is Tweeting.

For B2B marketers, lead generation is often both a top priority and a top challenge.

A variety of previous studies have clearly demonstrated that tweets can have an influence on consumer shopping behaviour, but there has not been an research carried out on how tweets affect the busy business decision maker. That is until now. Twitter has carried out its own research and published a report, called Tweets in Action: Mobile/Tech. The report’s findings demonstrate that Twitter has positive effects on the B2B social media marketing space, and tweets drive more site traffic, increase brand search, and influence conversion rates.

The Tweets in Action: Mobile/Tech survey conducted by Twitter and Compete analysed the visits of more than 6,000 U.S. users to B2B tech sites.

The gathered data clearly demonstrates that Internet users are much more likely to visit a B2B tech brand website when they have been exposed to a tweet from the brand. 59% of users visited the B2B tech sites after receiving tweets from the brand in comparison to only 40% of average internet users. The report’s authors believe this presents the clearest evidence yet that there is a strong presence of the B2B audience on Twitter.

Twitter users exposed to B2B tech brand tweets were also found to be much more likely to search for those brands online. Only as 12% of the average Internet users search for B2B tech brand sites, whereas that figure rises to 30% after users have seen brand tweets.

The Twitter and Compete survey also demonstrated that B2B tech tweets have a marked impact on conversion rates.

Only 4% of average Internet users completed sign-ups on landing pages, whereas 11% completed sign-ups after being exposed to a B2B tweet.

So what lessons can B2Bs learn from this?

The lessons are clear in the opinion of Twitter. In a blog post, the micro-blogging social media platform said the following:

“Business decision makers are engaging on Twitter. B2B customers and thought leaders use Twitter to discover information and share content. This offers B2B marketers a unique opportunity to connect with this audience, build relationships and influence their decisions – all in real time.”

“Tweet exposure not only increases site traffic and influences brand consideration, it also drives leads for B2B tech companies. In addition to offering educational resources to your audience, consider including specific calls-to-action with incentives to encourage sign-up.”